Conference Chairperson & Opening Remarks
Performance Reviews That Produce Usable Evidence
Speaker: Barbara Lynch, Lynch Training & Development Ltd
- Why many performance processes fail when challenged
- Setting clear performance expectations and standards
- Producing evidence that supports pay, progression and development decisions
- Reducing ambiguity, inconsistency and escalation
- The role of HR operations in enabling defensible performance processes
Personal and Professional Development Plans That Drive Delivery
Speaker: Cezary Kujawski, Director and Lead Coach at SmartGrowth
- Why many Personal and Professional Development Plans fail in practice
- Designing development plans that link directly to role and capability requirements
- Moving beyond training courses to on-the-job development actions
- Reviewing and updating development plans throughout the year
- Using development plans to support mobility, reskilling and retention
Skills Decisions: When to Upskill, Reskill or Redeploy
Speaker: Julie Ryan, Deputy Managing Director - Harvest Resources
- Understand the forces behind the skills shift taking place in organisations
- Explore the range of options to move your organisation towards a skills-based approach
- Identifying your current and future skills gaps
- Using data to guide your skills decisions
- Aligning skills decisions with workforce planning
Measuring Learning and Development Impact
Speaker: Niamh Moynihan, CEO, Better Workday
- Selecting measures that link development activity to performance outcomes
- Moving beyond attendance, completion and satisfaction metrics
- Using evidence to refine, scale or discontinue initiatives
- Reporting learning impact in a way senior leaders trust
- Protecting development investment through clear measurement
AI Agents in HR, Learning and Performance Management
Speaker: Amy Fahy, Assistant Professor of Business and Management, Maynooth University
- Where AI agents are already influencing development and performance activity
- Practical use cases that support managers, HR operations and learning teams
- Supporting development planning and follow-up with AI tools
- Governance, accountability and data considerations
- Understanding where human judgement must remain central
Why Performance, Development and Learning Investment Are Failing to Deliver
- Where organisations lose value between performance reviews, development planning and learning spend
- Structural gaps between HR operations, line management and learning functions
- How capability issues show up as productivity, quality and retention problems
- Warning signs HR and management teams should not ignore
- A practical diagnostic approach to identifying exposure
Capability Gaps as Organisational Risk: Public and Private Sector Lessons
- How capability gaps translate into service failure, operational risk and delivery issues
- Using Ireland’s Public Sector Capability Framework to identify and prioritise capability risk
- What private sector organisations can adopt from public sector capability approaches
- Where public sector organisations can apply private sector execution practices
- Practical steps to make capability visible and actionable
Strengthening Alignment Across Performance, Development and Learning
- Common points of breakdown between HR operations, managers and learning teams
- Clarifying ownership and accountability across functions
- Improving consistency in performance and development practices
- Embedding development into day-to-day work
- Practical actions to strengthen workforce capability over time
